2022 Friday — The 17th

“The 17th is always a Good Day!”

I woke-up with celebration on my mind. Today is the second anniversary of my retirement. On June 17th, 2020, I stepped into my first day of retirement. Like waking-up on the American Prairie, it was huge, it was wide, it was impossible to take it all in. It was overwhelming and such a welcome sight! More about this at the end.

I knew our daughter wanted to hangout with us today; actually she wanted to take her daddy out to lunch to celebrate Father's Day and circumvent the Sunday crowds. So I was early in the shower to get myself prepared for whatever might be on the agenda.

Meanwhile, on the little country road behind our home, the borderline between our city and the city to the north of us, Norco, workers were cutting down huge eucalyptus trees and putting the leafy branches thru the very noisy grinding machine.

At 11:15 we met our daughter at the Corona Airport Cafe for lunch. We sat outside, something that we love to do -- al fresco dining -- and watched the planes & helicopters as we enjoyed each other, our delicious meals, and the gentle breeze. We celebrated fathers, retirement, and each other as we continued to close the gap on 4-years of no relationship with our daughter (for 4+ years she was estranged from us).

As we prepared to leave, we told her we were going to head toward the Sit & Sleep Store; 2 years ago we purchased a new bed there for our new patio-room addition. We like the bed; it's one of the fancy beds that allows us to sit-up, or raise our feet up, and has several variations of vibration. It is considerably more bed than what we had planned to purchase. The bed is fabulous; it is, though, too tall. We cannot take the bed foundation apart, nor lift the mattress. We need help. So the store manager said for a small fee ($60.00) his delivery and set-up guys could come to our place Monday to take the spacers off the bed to lower it. Hooray!

The next big event today was that the "EasyTurf" (artificial lawn) guys finally returned our call. They will come here tomorrow to measure and provide the estimate for the final section of our backyard to be finished. It is the section right outside our patio room, by the little patio, and next to my TuffShed. That dirt area has big remnants of artificial grass haphazardly covering it (pieces leftover from our front yard landscape done in September 2018 when we moved back into this "first house" of ours after not living here for 24 years).

The last hurdle then is that we had several tree stumps and one large palm tree stump at ground level that needed to be removed. While Mr. Fun was having a short afternoon snooze, I stepped into the backyard to peek over the back fence to capture a picture of the tree guys working. That's when I thought maybe they could be the remedy to our tree stump dilemma and possibly come next week to grind our tree stumps. I took the picture of their truck with phone number on it inside to Mr. Fun. He phoned it. Within an hour the tree guys were in our backyard working diligently to eliminate and remove our stumps. In less than 30 minutes they had the job completed. We are now ready to have the artificial turf guys come and not only give us an estimate, but begin work whenever their schedule aligns with ours.

Three major projects on our "To Do" list now have check marks next to them. We entered our evening with a lovely feeling of accomplishment.

Like 2-years ago, I was feeling progress being made. When I retired from the college I had 29 years of fulltime teaching completed, I had well over a year of accumulated sick-leave days, and a "golden handshake" deal that gave me two extra years of service credit. So my pension is based on 32+ years of employment. I was 70 and I knew I had arrived at the Finish Line. For the past 5+ years others have been asking me when I was going to retire. My answer was always "not till I'm ready." Counting my year of part time work before I was hired in 1991, I had stood and delivered for 30 years in a classroom as a community college professor. I was ready to retire.

What I know now, 2-years later, is that I love retirement. I often tell others when they ask me about it is "it's six Saturdays and a Sunday!" And that is really what it feels like. I'm a do-er so I often have to tell myself to relax. I have to give myself permission to do nothing if that's what I want to do. Both of our homes are very low maintenance, so our priority is to play at whatever we want and socialize with friends. So far, I'm loving retirement.

This evening just before dark, I walked the pups way down the street and turned around, took a long look back toward our house, took a deep breath, and thanked God for walking me thru the uncharted territory of paperwork and decisions to get retired 2 years ago, and for the necessary accomplishments made today that will move us now into the next year of retirement. Oh, and if you are wondering, Mr. Fun has just celebrated 8-years of retirement.

That's Friday's celebration story from SoCal,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol
and Chloe & Mitzi too!